Introducing Fenestra: Open-Sourcing Windower 5

Just in time for Christmas, the Windower team has an early surprise for all of you developers - we are releasing the Windower 5 code under an open source license!

You can now find the source in the Fenestra GitHub repository.

While we certainly expect some questions, read on for a little more information about what this is, and why you might care about it!

If you do have questions, feel free to ask them in this thread, or join us in our Discord.



What is Fenestra?
Essentially, Fenestra is the open-source development version of Windower 5. It includes all the basic functionality for hooking into Final Fantasy XI, a launcher, addon framework, Lua interpreter, and so on.

The code is released under the MIT License. You can view the complete license in the repository.


What's the difference between Fenestra and Windower 5?
If you are familiar with the distinction between Chromium and Google Chrome, this is a similar situation.

Primarily, Fenestra does not include the Windower branding. Compatible addon packages are already open source and are maintained in the packages repository.

Windower 5 is the officially curated release of the code in addition to the addon packages from the repository maintained by the Windower development team.


What can I do with this?
In addition to everything that was already possible with the development alpha of Windower 5, you can now contribute to the core itself. You can also create your own build that contains your own changes, if you so choose.

For the benefit of everyone involved, we appreciate code contributions to the repository in the form of bug fixes, enhancements, new features and so on.


What can I *not* do with this?
You may not create a release that uses the Windower branding (name, artwork, etc.)


Why open-source the Windower 5 code?
The intent has always been to eventually release the Windower 5 code under an open source license.

As many of you are probably aware, most of the Windower development team has not actually played Final Fantasy XI in many years. Over time, dev team members' interest in working on Windower waxes and wanes, but we all want to see the project continue and succeed.

With the interest of a few key members currently at a low point, now seemed like a pretty good time.


I'm not a developer - should I care about this?
Well, no... but yes! In the immediate "right now", this announcement probably isn't meaningful to you unless you're a developer.

In the longer run, though, you probably should care because it hopefully means that Windower 5 will make more progress and reach general usability sooner.


Why is it called "Fenestra"?
Fenestra is the Latin word for window, and we are a bunch of nerds.

"i dont even know what it means. but it's provocative.... it keeps Windower going."



p.s is that a leafkin? did ejin put you up to this. ugh.

A problem XI has always had is that many of its players are ideologically opposed to supporting anything anyone does for it financially, and it's considered rude to even ask. Even the game itself, if it added a cash shop selling outfits like ff14 does would cause outrage.

If this was for WoW or 14 it would have a patreon account and a decent amount of people would be paying a few bucks every month to support it.

Even this website that thousands of people use, would close (as many XI websites have been doing so lately) before a decent number of people would give it a few bucks (if they asked for donations).

Not sure where this topic got it's start, but people constantly ask if they can throw money at windower and we turn them down every time.

we don't want to get paid to work on this project, we simply want to do it because it is fun. If we take money we are obligated to do work and it stops being fun.

Thank you for doing this, the fact that it's out there is very positive.

Are you taking contributions?

Just like our other public repos, anyone is free to contribute

That's a big nope and when tossing around ideas to not use Mandie, yes we spell our "mascot" "ie" not "y". The person who thought of the leafkin probably has zero idea who Ejin is. I personally liked the idea and didn't even think of Ejin at the time either or I may have voted no. :P

Its not like he invented it or made it popular. It was always a popular monster from when SE introduced it, I have had one as an avatar on discoid long before he started streaming so. Can't always associate someone with an image or maybe people do.

Ah, so it's the root word of defenestration. Makes sense.

Stop taking Fenestra if you experience allergic reaction, dizziness, shortness of breath,

Wow you guys made my christmas :o thank you!

Wow, I'm currently not very active myself, but this is an awesome announcement and I hope that it gets the contributions in code it deserves. Cool move, kudos to all the folks who have been, are currently, or will in the future be working on this fantastic piece of software.
This game would've long been dead well over a decade ago if it wasn't for some of you people reverse engineering every packet and having fun with it, imho anyways.
Happy new year!

I feel like this announcement is 2-3 years too late to get any real traction. I hope I'm wrong.

I feel you. Ashita v4 has come a long way, but what is good for windower is the much larges userbase and addons.

I also hope this get some traction.